Tuesday, April 27, 2010

In response to the last post Stephanie said, "I find this kind of motivational cheese off-putting because it's great for those of us who have had the luck and ability to pursue and realize our dreams, but not so great for the people who did not. A lot of it is out of our control and I think the notion that people who don't realize their dreams simply did not believe in themselves enough is feel-good yuppie fluff that isn't true. Life is hard and some people do the right thing and still suffer.

"I've learned a lot from my mother, who has suffered many disappointments, lost a lot, and has many dreams that were unfulfilled. She works a job she doesn't like and that holds no meaning for her, but for many reasons has no options but to continue. But she has grown in wisdom throughout her life and not always getting what she wants or realizing her dreams is part of what has made her wise. The beauty of Zen: we are liberated from 'what we want' and no longer have to be yoked to its tyranny."

Good points. I'm sorry the post came off a bit like one of those cheezy "reach for your dreams" things. But it wasn't so much about going for your dreams as about not letting others define for you what you should be. It sounds like Stephanie's mom has managed to avoid letting others define who she should be. Good. And by the way, I never said anything like, "people who don't realize their dreams simply did not believe in themselves enough." Just FYI.

It's been amazing to me to see that even getting exactly what you want is never really getting exactly what you want. Like Johnny Ramone said, "Being a rock and roll guitar player is a great job. But in the end, it's still a job and I still hate it." Disappointments come from both not realizing your dreams and from realizing them. Disappointment may have very little to do with either. I've gotten exactly what I wanted many times and been deeply disappointed.

Yet, on the other hand, there is something to be said for the old "reach for your dreams" nonsense. I think we all know innately what the universe wants us to do. And yet we are easily deterred by society that has its own often deeply confused and wrong-headed demands. Those dreams you have may or may not be narcissistic desire for grandeur. They may, instead, come from your connection with the whole of society and the whole of reality and a clear vision of what it is you need to do in the world. You may be sensing what society actually wants rather than what it thinks it wants.

In that sense of it, letting others convince you that you can't do those things does as much of a disservice to them as it does to you. Going for your dreams may be the best thing you can do not just for you, but for everyone.

Still, what you really want may be, in fact, to be a garbageman and not a movie star. There is dignity and worthiness in any occupation or station in life. It's society's confusion that tells you othewise, tells you that what you have now is unworthy. Disappointment may be the difference between what you actually want and what you think you want.

I'd say the beauty of Zen is to be liberated from what we think we want and to find out what we actually want.

I'm a dad of two young ones, 2.5 and 0.5 years old to be exact. I'm finally getting around to reading Zen Dipped in Karma and in it you have an aside where you mention that from our childhood we've had this idea of self drilled into us by our parents, and that it is not our parents fault but that we need to work through zazen to untangle all of this. However, we also need to teach our kids how to "play the game" of society that everyone buys into so they can be successful as they travel through it. I'm coming to accept the world as contradiction but it is hard to instill this idea of contradiction into kids. It is hard enough to instill the idea of eating with utensils (however I have instilled a deep love of The Clash and John Lee Hooker into my daughter, And Bad Brains. She loves Bad Brains.) So how do you think this would be done? I feel that I have this great opportunity to perhaps point them in a direction where they will already be that much farther along when they do get older.

Ho boy. I have no children (that I know of!*) so I am supremely unqualified to give parenting advice. But here are my thoughts on the matter anyway.

It is absolutely necessary for children to be raised with an understanding of how most people understand the world. They can't survive without that. And I understand that even managing that much is a huge amount of work for any parent. You mentioned eating with utensils and that's just a small part of teaching children how the greater society works and how to interact with it.

As far as the other stuff goes, I think you demonstrate more than teach. Kids will pick up on the fact that you don't really buy into society's bullshit without being told. And they're being conditioned by more than just you, anyway. So you don't have much hope if you try to fight all of society by yourself. No matter how hard people try to be the one sole influence on a kid's life it never really works.

I've been a horn-ball since I was a kid, and sexual tension keeps coming up as a distraction in all kinds of situations. How do I keep it in check? Sex has some kind of weird truth to it that comes in and smacks me on the face when I think I'm all balanced. The only sensible way I've come up with to incorporate it into my practice is to think of everything as sex.

In "Sit Down and Shut Up" you talk about how a friend of yours was looking at a hot girl and said she was out of his league. Your perspective was that just by looking at her she has already given something to you. When I apply that sort of gratitude to actual sex it actually gets a lot better. Any thoughts on how that fits in with zazen? By the way, when I do zazen at night and I get sleepy, sometimes sexual thoughts come in and wake me up and I let them, and sometimes if I don't hold onto them they seem to help the zazen.

Oh lord. I do know what you mean. I've often felt like the only guy in the zendo with a sex drive. I know now this is not true. And I suspected it even way back when.

When I started out I was almost always the youngest guy in the room at any Zen place. Usually by at least 10 years, most often more. This tended to accentuate my isolation in the sense of feeling like the only guy who ever got horny. Plus there's an unhealthy pretentiousness that develops in Zen places. It's not cool to admit you have a sex drive, so everyone pretends they don't.

But sexual thoughts are just one category of stuff that comes up. Like other thoughts they'll pass if you don't feed them. But it's often really hard to resist. Sometimes zazen brings up deeper stuff. And the sex fantasies that can be released can be much hotter than the ones you'd consciously create.

Thoughts don't really need to be kept in check. Actions certainly do. Thoughts can be very free. You can't control what comes up. The best you can do is learn to let it go.

I like the idea of thinking of everything as sex. For lots of people, sex is the one area of life in which they're truly participating 100% without holding anything back. Learning to approach the whole of life the way we approach sex might have some real value.

* Actually I've been very careful throughout my sex life, so definitely I have no children.

69 comments:

It is funny how much "stuff" we attach to all of our thoughts. This can be especially true of sexual thoughts.

I am a big homo (surprise!) During Sesshin, my most common object of distraction is sexual thoughts. When I finally made it okay to have the thoughts and quit trying to decide what they had to be or how they had to be, and really started to study them some interesting things developed.

First: It wasn't always some hot guy I was choosing for the distracting fantasy. IT wasn't in fact always a guy. I also really started to notice what it was that would attract me to the people who occupy my thoughts, and guess what, I learned what it was that I found exciting and interesting.

When I stop judging and deciding which thoughts were okay or not okay, I was able to look deeply at them and sure enough I learned more about my own "self" in the process.

Dogen is right, "To study the way, is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self..." But you can't study something you have already decided a bunch of stuff about.

The thought of raising a child in today's environment just terrifies me. Of course people in every generation have felt this way, but I still can't shake the feeling that there is something extra heinous about the world we're bringing our kids into. If you're a parent all I can say is good luck.

Shunryu Suzuki said "Enjoy your life without being fooled by things," which is pretty similar to Brad's response, but anyway getting today's children to take that to heart is really the best we can hope for.

...we are easily deterred by society that has its own often deeply confused and wrong-headed demands...There is dignity and worthiness in any occupation or station in life. It's society's confusion that tells you othewise, tells you that what you have now is unworthy.

Regardless of the context in which she said it, Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS; Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 once said:

"There is no such thing as society"

Maggie had a point, I think.

********************************Hi Rinzai or die,

There was much excitement and ejaculation over sex/pornography on this very blog a short while ago, building to a frenzy and spilling over onto the following post.

You said "For lots of people, sex is the one area of life in which they're truly participating 100% without holding anything back."

I guess you mean when people finally get around to having sex. Your statement is probably only a sexual fantasy in itself. I think regarding sex, most people are always holding something back.. Maybe dogs don't but people always do. I can't remember the last time I saw a couple fucking in a restaurant. Even your saying "suck me" in this public forum is just a checked version of telling someone to suck your penis.

I think for a lot of people, having a baby isnt such a worry. Its like pigs in shit.

But for people who are at least semi conscious, who at least take a look around and are not fully suckerd in by 'society', having kids is the most horrific idea possible. At least for me and where i live!

I realized the line "sounds like Stephanie's mom has done this" could be taken the wrong way in context. So let the record show I changed it to, "It sounds like Stephanie's mom has done managed to avoid letting others define who she should be. Good."

@ all,we'd been kids and that was all right. Your parents determined your way of thinking over children. There's no different between kids and no-Kids, it's just ok.And you can practice Zen in the form of giving without expecting anything. My son is a good teacher for me, every second he's present and pure. The best thing I can do to him, to accept him as he is and not thinking about bringing him to some grown-up.( Sorry for maybe wrong words, I'm not well educated in english).

I spent hours in Zazen with creating new sexual imagination and I enjoyed it. Because I can do, what ever I wanted without doing it for real, what means I don't really suffered anybody.Now thoughts like this are mainly gone and in real there's a real wife. Go for real sex and don't think about it, buddy.Be the sex-good/goddess of your life and thing about golden rule nr.2Cheers,Gerald

I understand what you are saying about our station in life having dignity and worthiness and society being the factor that makes it seem unworthy. I cooked for many years, some of which was in a hospital. The doctors used to want all these big dinners, which I was proud of doing and making a big show out of it, but they talked to me and treated me like I was nothing and low because I was "just the cook". I got so tired of people treating me that way because I cooked that I started really hating my jobs.

Pertaining to the quote from your book, "from our childhood we've had this idea of self drilled into us by our parents, and that it is not our parents fault but that we need to work through zazen to untangle all of this," I understand this one very well. My parents spent my whole life (even now) telling me what I should be doing with every aspect of my life and that I am not who I should be or what they think I should be in life. As I am just starting along my path into Zen, I am hoping that practicing zazen will help me sort everything out and find out who I really am in some way.

This is one of your best blog posts. I've struggled with these issues myself.

It gives me some comfort that my kids will learn by example. In fact, I was already skeptical of TV, Commercialism, media, etc. before i started doing zen, and my kids have already picked up on that and started to mimic. My oldest will say upon seeing a toy commercial: "That probably doesn't work that well...they just want me to buy it"

i've had some sexual thoughts and feelings come up during zazen, and have also struggled with how much stock i give my sexuality. Even though close to 40 and happily married, it seems like it has a lot of sway over me and i still have a lot of attachment.

Little Nelson realized that he was quite unlike the other children in the area as he looked down upon Central Park South from his father's penthouse suite.

It is true, some people will have no opportunity to realize their dreams. Other people will have dreams that they lack the ability to reach, regardless of opportunity. And then there are many - even most - of the people who will realize only suffering. They will go to sleep without having found enough food for a single meal during the day.

All is well. That is correct. And yet that is the hardest point to get across. Most liberal tree huggers will never understand this fundamental truth. They'll accuse you of callousness, laziness, of being a citizen-zombie who's wasting his life with his head in the sand, all of which might be true.

I don't really care. If the earth is going to destroy the earth through human agency, which appears to be the case, then oh well, life will go on, maybe not in the way we'd like it to, maybe not without human beings at all, but it'll go on in one form or another. Mother knows best I guess.

I used to fantasize quite a lot about sex on the meditation cushion. These days I mostly fantasize about enlightenment, a change I attribute mostly to getting older. I think sexual fantasies have less to do about horniness (though obviously that is a factor) than boredom. After that second hour of sitting I was going to do something, anything to fill up the mental void that I was so actively resisting. And a private porno show did the job quite nicely.

Just back from a short music tour of the Mid-West with my old band mate Bill Goffrier (The Embarrassment, Big Dipper) and I'm happily exhausted...How do you do it, Brad? Maybe its the weight of the zafu opposed to the guitars amps and drums and crap?

Check out my article "Ramana Maharshi and Self Enquiry" dropping into the posts on Buddhist Geeks .com this Friday...

I appreciate the clarification and agree with the more subtle points you make about the value of examining desire. I agree that 'what we think we want' and 'what we really want' are often different, and the latter is usually much simpler and more accessible. We think we want fame and fortune when all we really want or need is a few close people we love and enough money not to have to live in constant stress and anxiety about losing a home, going hungry, etc.

However, I think there's something to be said sometimes for having someone bring us back down to earth. Sometimes our dreams are grandiose and unrealistic when we compare them to our actual means and abilities. It might serve us well to listen to "naysayers" sometimes.

And I have to say about my mom--she doesn't always get to be herself, or be true to herself. Crappy things go on at work, unfair things, and she can't always say what's on her mind because it would mean losing her job, which isn't very enjoyable to her in the first place. Many, if not most of us, find ourselves in similar positions. We can't always "let our freak flag fly" and tell naysayers to "suck it." Sometimes we have to suck down shit and put on a fake smile to survive. There is great dignity in all work but there is also great indignity in work. For most of us, work means the loss of personal agency and accepting things we don't want to accept.

Again, the liberation of Zen for me has been realizing that life is better, and wiser, than my dreams and ideals. You've written much on the same theme, Brad. Having my hopes crushed and not getting to do or achieve everything I wanted was what helped me grow up and start getting to know Reality better.

I'm not sure the universe gives a damn what any of us do. I don't believe in a "master plan." I used to want to believe in such things, but I don't feel that same yearning any more. I don't need to have my life story mapped into the fabric of the cosmos to be able to enjoy the ride.

don't worry, babbling brooks, babbling minds, just stuff. none of us knows where the earth is really, or why our awareness seems to exist. it can be frightening. making words feels safe for a few moments.

I know where the earth is. It's where it's always been--nowhere. And I know why I exist. I'm here to manifest motherfuckin Buddha nature, and reflect the beauty of the universe right back at itself through everything I do. It's really that simple.

Dhammapada or no, most people find that they do not control the thoughts that pop into their head. And quoting scripture in an argument is not how I usually think about Zen. Telling people they shouldn't think bad thoughts sounds to me like it will only produce guilt.

If you have lustful, greedy, hateful thoughts it is good not to act upon them. (Brad's point)

It is even better to stop such thoughts as they arise and before they take hold. Since eventually the thought of wrong-doing creates effects within the mind. (Maybe this is what Brad means by 'letting them go'.

It is still better to see the source of delusive thoughts before they arise. Actions create karma. But thoughts do as well.

Thoughts, once arisen, should be tucked under the left armpit and stroked three times to calm them. It helps to imagine them as a small furry common garden mole with orange cheese puff residue around it's mouth. The mole should alternately smile and frown, depending on one's intuitive perception. Treated in this way, over time, thoughts will emerge peaceful of their own accord... NOT!

Re the Dhammapada, from which quote mind's (6.55am) "Buddha" quotes are taken: here's a couple of comments I found in Wiki:

John Brough, who wrote extensively on the subject of the related Gāndhārī Dharmapada, believed that the text had largely been composed from a patchwork of cliches, and that while it contained a few novel and well-constructed verses, suffered from an "accumulation of insipid mediocrity"...

Geiger (2004) writes:More than half the verses may be found also in other canonical texts. The compiler of the [Dhammapada] however certainly did not depend solely on these canonical texts but also made use of the great mass of pithy sayings which formed a vast floating literature in India...

Several scholars have noted that much of the Dhammapada consists of vague moral aphorisms, many of them not clearly specific to Buddhism at all...

In a similar vein, Hinüber (2000) remarks: "The contents of the [Dhammapada] are mainly gnomic verses, many of which have hardly any relation to Buddhism."

Call me a heretic, call me a blasphemer, but that fits with my non-scholarly impression of much of the Dhammapada.

I have to paraphrase here cuz I'm too lazy to look up quotes on my ipod but Shunryu Suzuki says something similar in Zen Mind Beginners mind about giving open space to get control and Gudo Nishijima says just let the thoughts release into the universe and I remembercthe Buddha saying not argue teachings on a blog, the most important thing is practice and if it works use it if it dont dont.

From ancient times to the present, the Dhammapada has been regarded as the most succinct expression of the Buddha's teaching found in the Pali canon and the chief spiritual testament of early Buddhism. Among Pali composition, Dhammapada and the corresponding Sanskrit version are not only cited by the rest of suttas but also cross-cited by in all versions of the sutta. That is, Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese and Tibetan versions of the Tipitaka all contain the same Dhammapada passages. Moreover, these section seems to follow language usage is much similar to Magadhi dialect, Eastern dialect which was used by the Buddha Gautama while the Pali is a Western dialect.

But as always, Brad's followers are free to discount any Buddhist scripture that might contradict His teachings.

The fool thinks he has won a battle when he bullies with harsh speech,but knowing how to be forbearing alone makes one victorious.--the Buddha

All philosophies are mental fabrications. There has never been a single doctrine by which one could enter the true essence of things.--Nagarjuna

"I manifested in a dreamlike way to dreamlike beings and gave a dreamlike Dharma, but in reality I never taught and never actually came." - The Buddha

"But as always, Brad's followers are free to discount any Buddhist scripture that might contradict His teachings."

That hurts!

I've been having thoughts of my own long before I heard of Brad Warner. I've only read his first book, which I didn't much like (the style rather than the content), and google books excerpts of the other two - bits of which I enjoyed. However, in common with Brad - and with the Dogen Sangha teacher whose retreats I've attended, I try hard to resist the temptation to believe anything simply because someone told me to, or because I read it in a book, or because it's part of a tradition (that idea ring a bell?).

To believe that every word of the Buddhist canon is an accurate report of what Gotama B said and taught is, IMO, silly. To go further and regard Gotama B as an infallible authority whose teaching cannot be questioned, so elevating those words to the status of divine edict is...un-Buddhist.

BTW QM - As you know a little about the various versions of the Dhammapada you might appreciate the work of someone who knows a little more. That's John Brough, erstwhile Professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge University and the source of a couple of those wiki quotes you didn't like...clearly a Brad follower.